A variety of devices are available for personal use by individuals for taking prescribed medications. Most common are those which have one compartment for each day of the week, commencing with a Sunday and going through the following Saturday. Other units are available for supplying different pills or a quantity of the same pills for a single day. One such unit has a resettable count-down timer and battery-operated alarm for indicating that a predetermined time has passed since taking the last medication, and that it is time to take another dose. Some systems have a way of distinguishing ante meridiem (AM) from post meridiem (PM) times of the day and some use Braille identifying means for the sightless. These systems are quite acceptable in instances where an individual is capable of discerning which medication or the proper dose of a specific medicine to take. But in some instances, such as in the case of a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease, e.g., such a system can be confusing for the person to self-administer the medication. It can even be somewhat confusing for a care giver of that person, particularly where many different medications are required at various times of day. In other instances such as in a hospital where medications are under control of multiple nurses who administer to the same patient, care must be taken to assure that proper medication is timely taken and in the proper dosage. Safeguards have been developed to provide patient protection in the latter such instance, but even these safeguards can stand improvement.
Time-related dispensers are known for other uses, as well. For example, an indexable 96 hour clock can be set to expose five different bowls of cat food on a daily basis when a cat is left alone in a house for a prolonged period during which no one is around to feed it. Similarly, timed dispensers are known for feeding fish at preselected times.